Introducing: Dakota Spotlight Season 12

Speaker 1 True Story Media.

Speaker 1 Hello, I have exciting news. I am officially taking this show on the road next year.
I'm going to be doing a series of Nobody Should Believe Me live shows next March.

Speaker 1 I will be in Los Angeles on March 7th at the Regent Theater. I'll be in my hometown, Seattle, at the Triple Door on March 18th.
Then I'm headed to New York City for a show at Sony Hall on March 25th.

Speaker 1 And I'll be wrapping up in Chicago on March 26th at The Den. Tickets for all shows are on sale now.
You can find a link in the show notes or on our website.

Speaker 1 We're going to have special guests, meet and greets, and more at these shows. We're going to have a great time.
So go get your tickets now. Hope to see you out there.

Speaker 1 Many of you know that I was an author before I was a podcaster, and those worlds collide with my new audiobook.

Speaker 1 The Mother Next Door, Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy, which I co-authored with Detective Mike Weber, and which I narrate.

Speaker 1 If you want to dive into these three fascinating cases, you can listen wherever you get your audiobooks. Here's a sample.

Speaker 1 You busy? Alana said, leaning against the doorway of Mike's office. We got another Munchausen by Proxy case.
This one is ours. You interested?

Speaker 1 Of course, Mike told her, somewhat taken aback. Wasn't this abuse vanishingly rare?

Speaker 1 Alana deposited the voluminous CPS report about Hope Yobara on his desk. Mike had worked dozens of child abuse cases by this point in his life.
He'd seen children subjected to unimaginable horror.

Speaker 1 He thought he had seen the absolute worst of humanity already, but nothing could have prepared him for what he was about to discover about hope.

Speaker 2 Hey, everyone, it's me, James. I'm very excited to announce a brand new season of Dakota Spotlight coming during the first week of November.

Speaker 2 Season 12 is titled Meanwhile in Mankato, Lies, Silence, and Murder in Minnesota. Here is your first listen.

Speaker 2 If you've ever been to a garage sale or an estate auction, you've probably felt that tingle of excitement while sifting through items on a table or in a box, because somewhere mixed in among the junk, there just might be a gem.

Speaker 2 That happened to me a couple of years ago. No, not at a garage sale, but in the online archives of a library.

Speaker 2 I was scrolling through old newspapers, half distracted by the blur of endless headlines, when a little story caught my eye. It was an old one from 1965 about a murder.

Speaker 3 Rapid Ann was a little farming community, a bank, numerous houses, two grocery stores, and a school.

Speaker 2 The headline read like this. Mankato youth arrested in shotgun slaying.

Speaker 2 On a late night in September of 1965, in rural Minnesota, a clean-cut 17-year-old high school student walked into a local crossroads gas station on the edge of town.

Speaker 2 Gas station in front, truck stop in the back. Kind of a lonesome place out on the highway.

Speaker 2 In his hands was a loaded shotgun. When he walked out, he had about $800 in his pocket, and the gas attendant lay dead on the floor.

Speaker 3 Said he's not sleeping. He's been shot.

Speaker 2 The Minnesota law caught up with him quickly, and 10 months later, a judge told him, son, you're going away for 40 years.

Speaker 2 I found myself repeating the same questions in my head.

Speaker 2 Why would a 17-year-old kid, clean-cut and ordinary-looking, walk into a gas station so close to home and risk his whole future by killing someone for a little cash?

Speaker 2 And about that murdered gas station attendant, he too was a teenager, just 18 years old.

Speaker 3 Brown hair and brown eyes, caring young man, wonderful personality.

Speaker 2 I was curious, what becomes of a 17-year-old killer? Where does his life go? Who was he and who was the young man he killed? And why did this happen?

Speaker 2 One news clipping turned to three, then five, then 50. At first, there were some minor discoveries and surprises.

Speaker 3 They put him in one cell, and they put me in another cell, and they questioned us the rest of the night.

Speaker 2 Although those little nuggets are far from central to the story, what is central is this.

Speaker 2 I had assumed that his 40-year sentence in 1965 was the end of his opportunities to harm others for a very long time.

Speaker 2 But I was wrong. I uncovered more chapters of his story, such as the steady stream of young teenage girls.

Speaker 2 Teenage girls who, not 40 years later, but more like five years later, found themselves face to face with this man almost every day.

Speaker 2 Sometimes they found themselves alone with him, and they were never told. They never knew anything about his very violent past.

Speaker 5 No, only time I heard those words is when Tekora Spale called.

Speaker 2 And I know what you're thinking. How could a man put away in prison for a senseless murder be anywhere near vulnerable young girls?

Speaker 2 That's the same question everyone has asked me as I've worked on this story. That's just, um, that's just impossible.

Speaker 2 And another question is, why is it that those girls and others who crossed this man's life were never informed about his violent history?

Speaker 2 Well, as you will witness in this series, it was as if his past had been scrubbed away by him, by those around him, and by the very institutions meant to hold him accountable.

Speaker 2 And sometimes it seemed by nothing more than blind luck, as if the stars themselves had cleared his path.

Speaker 2 I've spoken to a lot of people while working on this story. I've talked with friends of the young gas station attendant who was killed that night.

Speaker 5 He was very talented.

Speaker 6 He had a good sense of humor.

Speaker 4 He taught himself to play the guitar.

Speaker 2 I've spoken with the perpetrator's family.

Speaker 4 She said, there's something I have to tell you. He hasn't been in college.
He was in prison.

Speaker 2 And I've spoken with a woman who many years ago, at the age of 15, had the courage to speak up.

Speaker 5 The next thing I know, I'm going to trial.

Speaker 2 I've learned that some people have spent most of their lives trying to untangle the lies they were told about this man.

Speaker 4 But that was just a lie. All of that was just a lie.
I mean, how does that help us kids? Well, you don't understand. You wouldn't understand.

Speaker 7 You're right, I don't.

Speaker 4 And I still don't.

Speaker 2 Other people I've spoken to were shocked when Dakota Spotlight became the first and only entity ever to inform them.

Speaker 2 that the man that they had unfortunately crossed paths with decades ago was a murderer.

Speaker 5 I couldn't believe it. And then I thought to myself, how do they even hire this man?

Speaker 2 This is a story about murder, manipulation, and injustice, about a man who killed and seemed to slip past accountability at every turn.

Speaker 2 It's also about a young man robbed of his future and a young girl who spoke her truth when few wanted to hear it. And it's a type of mission.

Speaker 2 all these years later, to return validation to those left in the wreckage of a killer's lies lies and to restore the truth to its rightful place at last.

Speaker 7 Point blank with a 12-gauge shotgun.

Speaker 6 With a rap sheet like this, how could a guy be able to be in a position of authority?

Speaker 7 He lied so much, he believed his lies.

Speaker 6 So I don't understand how he slipped through the cracks. I really don't.

Speaker 5 The question I would have for the state of Minnesota is: how would you allow that?

Speaker 4 Just for heaven's sakes, am I that bad of a person that you can't that I mean,

Speaker 4 I don't even deserve the truth?

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, in Mankato, lies, silence, and murder in Minnesota is coming to you in November. Episode one will be released to all listeners on Thursday, November 6th.

Speaker 2 Spotlight Plus subscribers can binge the full season ad-free that same day.

Speaker 2 Thank you for listening and for being a part of Dakota Spotlight.

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